Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Literature

'Literature According to tradition, an oralsacredJit tute hal-heeRpassed down from. the ,days. of Mahavirat Bhadrabahu . was the last person to know it perfectly,
his dea~,$thulabhadracalled it great council at Patalipu and the canon' was recoru;truded as best: possible in twE Angas or> sections, which replaced, the fourteen' former te (Purvas). This canonwasaccepted only by the Svetamba: the, Digainbaras claimed that the old canon was hopele:;

lost, and proceeded to devise new .scriptures for themseh some of which are still unpublished. The texts, of ' Svetambara canon were finally settled and reduced
writing at a,coQIldl at Valabhi in Gujarat in the fifth cenft Be. By this time the texts 'had become corrupt'anti one the Angas had been completely lost, while new material,h been added to the original canon in the form- oftwel Upangas, or minor sections, and' various Jesser' works. 'F literatufe is in Ardha-Magadhi.

In the Middle Ages, a great body of non-canonit literature. was written both : in Prakritand-8ansktit. ArnOl the Jain writers the most important! were Bhadrabah Siddhasena, Divakara, .Manibhadl'a, Siddha; Hemachandl Nayachandraand Mallinath. ,The Jainaswrote narratil lHerabIre, kavyas, novelsrdramasand hymns. Jain philoSo phers, elaborated the ,doctrine ofsyadvadaas against the Buddhistsunyavadaiand' attained:special excellence-inlogi Jainscontril>,uted much to grammar; lexicography; poetia mathematics, astranomy; astrology and politicalth6ugh They also contributed to the development. of SOIne.Iegioru languages lik~~Kannada, Tamil; Telugu;Gujarati, Hind Rajasthani . -and Marathi.

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